That Thing That Keeps Happening
The twittex summary↱: "Richard Hanania is a right-wing star. A UT Austin scholar, his fans include JD Vance, Thiel, Musk, Sacks, Rufo. HarperCollins will publish his book 'The Origins of Woke'"
And the punch line: "He used a pseudonym for yrs to write for white supremacist sites".
Or, Christopher Mathias' lede for HuffPost↱:
Inasmuch as it keeps happening, or something like that, the mystery is not that people like this exist, but that they can hide in plain sight as they do:
Consider that Hanania did not really need to shift away from his notorious pseudonomycal arguments; he may have "moderated his words to some extent", but "still makes explicitly racist statements under his real name". These include "a creepy obsession with so-called race science, arguing that Black people are inherently more prone to violent crime than white people", Holocasust denial, anti-feminism, transgender suppression, and other rightist infamy.
In 2010, Hanania was recruited by the American Nazi Richard Spencer for AlternativeRight; a 2012 data breach at Disqus suggests that Hanania used sock puppets to post comments at the site. He also ran a blog named after "the preferred euphemism for race science", which is rich with biographical overlap and instrumental to HuffPost's investigation.
And then there is the record he left:
And if Hanania found Sarah Palin an acceptable sort of woman for public office, it was the 2009 version of owning the libs, explaining, "The attractive, religious and fertile White woman drove the ugly, secular and barren White self-hating and Jewish elite absolutely mad well before there were any questions about her qualifications."
He looked forward to Palin in 2012 "just so I can watch liberals' heads explode" when the "goddess of implicit Whiteness" defeats the Black president. And in true alt-right fashion, he continued, "If it's going to be a long time until a White awakening, we may as well be entertained while we wait."
Women, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks, just check them all down the list; Hanania's writing over the years is straightforward supremacism. He claims genetic differences between Muslims and Europeans mean "assimilation is impossible", and that Hispanics "don't have the requisite IQ to be a productive part of a first world nation", describing other races as "a permanent antagonist", and "Race mixing is like destroying a unique species or piece of art. It's shameful."
And it's one thing to keep piling on, but it's also incendiary; in 2009, Hanania wrote, "If they had decency, blacks would thank the white race for everything that they have." And that's before we get to eugenics and forced sterilization.
In 2010, he recycled a 1997 speech from American Nazi and author of The Turner Diaries, William Pierce.
Hanania emerged under his own named while in law school, then grad school, and then a prestigious postdoc at Columbia University.
And nobody really wants to comment, right now; Hanania, himself declined, as did WaPo, NYT, and FOX News. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who has previously described Hanania as a "friend", also declined comment. Newsweek, Quillette, and National Review; Yale Federalist Society, Stanford University School of Business, Salem Center at University Texas, the unaccredited University of Austin. Substack isn't answering HuffPost's inquiries. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose CEO has repeatedly appeared on Hanania's podcast, is also quiet in the moment, while publisher HarperCollins has not answered multiple inquiries.)
And that's the thing: Hiding in plain sight. There is a certain degree to which these people and organizations don't know what to say, and we can kind of understand why. But there is also this: If David Sacks, Peter Thiel, and Vivek Ramaswamy are also on the no-comment list, Hanania praises them as the "Tech Right", a movement that includes "longtermism", a transhumanist assertion whose "adherents are often obsessed with IQ scores and scientific racism, and the famous computer scientist Timnit Gebru has criticized longtermism as 'eugenics under a different name.'"
No wonder he's a conservative darling.
____________________
Notes:
@letsgomathias. "NEW @RichardHanania is a right-wing star. A @UTAustin scholar, his fans include JD Vance, Thiel, Musk, Sacks, Rufo. @HarperCollins will publish his book 'The Origins of Woke' HuffPost found he used a pseudonym for yrs to write for white supremacist sites". Twitter. 4 August 2023. Twitter.com. 4 August 2023. https://bit.ly/3qj6wrT
Mathias, Christopher. "Richard Hanania, Rising Right-Wing Star, Wrote For White Supremacist Sites Under Pseudonym". HuffPost. 4 August 2023. HuffPost.com. 4 August 2023. https://bit.ly/3OIIOi9
The twittex summary↱: "Richard Hanania is a right-wing star. A UT Austin scholar, his fans include JD Vance, Thiel, Musk, Sacks, Rufo. HarperCollins will publish his book 'The Origins of Woke'"
And the punch line: "He used a pseudonym for yrs to write for white supremacist sites".
Or, Christopher Mathias' lede for HuffPost↱:
A prominent conservative writer, lionized by Silicon Valley billionaires and a U.S. senator, used a pen name for years to write for white supremacist publications and was a formative voice during the rise of the racist "alt-right," according to a new HuffPost investigation.
Richard Hanania, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, used the pen name "Richard Hoste" in the early 2010s to write articles where he identified himself as a "race realist." He expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of "low IQ" people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed "miscegenation" and "race-mixing." And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of "The Turner Diaries," the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.
A decade later, writing under his real name, Hanania has ensconced himself in the national mainstream media, writing op-eds in the country's biggest papers, bending the ears of some of the world's wealthiest men and lecturing at prestigious universities, all while keeping his past white supremacist writings under wraps.
Richard Hanania, a visiting scholar at the University of Texas, used the pen name "Richard Hoste" in the early 2010s to write articles where he identified himself as a "race realist." He expressed support for eugenics and the forced sterilization of "low IQ" people, who he argued were most often Black. He opposed "miscegenation" and "race-mixing." And once, while arguing that Black people cannot govern themselves, he cited the neo-Nazi author of "The Turner Diaries," the infamous novel that celebrates a future race war.
A decade later, writing under his real name, Hanania has ensconced himself in the national mainstream media, writing op-eds in the country's biggest papers, bending the ears of some of the world's wealthiest men and lecturing at prestigious universities, all while keeping his past white supremacist writings under wraps.
Inasmuch as it keeps happening, or something like that, the mystery is not that people like this exist, but that they can hide in plain sight as they do:
The 37-year-old has been published by The New York Times and The Washington Post. He delivered a lecture to the Yale Federalist Society and was interviewed by the Harvard College Economics Review. He appeared twice on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," Fox News' former prime-time juggernaut. He was a recent guest on a podcast hosted by the CEO of Substack, the $650 million publishing platform where Hanania has nearly 20,000 subscribers.
Hanania has his own podcast, too, interviewing the likes of Steven Pinker, the famous Harvard cognitive psychologist, and Marc Andreessen, the billionaire software engineer. Another billionaire, Elon Musk, reads Hanania's articles and replies approvingly to his tweets. A third billionaire, Peter Thiel, provided a blurb to promote Hanania's book, "The Origins of Woke," which HarperCollins plans to publish this September. In October, Hanania is scheduled to deliver a lecture at Stanford.
Hanania has his own podcast, too, interviewing the likes of Steven Pinker, the famous Harvard cognitive psychologist, and Marc Andreessen, the billionaire software engineer. Another billionaire, Elon Musk, reads Hanania's articles and replies approvingly to his tweets. A third billionaire, Peter Thiel, provided a blurb to promote Hanania's book, "The Origins of Woke," which HarperCollins plans to publish this September. In October, Hanania is scheduled to deliver a lecture at Stanford.
Consider that Hanania did not really need to shift away from his notorious pseudonomycal arguments; he may have "moderated his words to some extent", but "still makes explicitly racist statements under his real name". These include "a creepy obsession with so-called race science, arguing that Black people are inherently more prone to violent crime than white people", Holocasust denial, anti-feminism, transgender suppression, and other rightist infamy.
Richard Hanania's story may hint at a concerning shift in mainstream American conservatism. A little over a decade ago, he felt compelled to hide his racist views behind a pseudonym. In 2023, Hanania is a right-wing star, championed by some of the country's wealthiest men, even as he's sounding more and more like his former white supremacist nom de plume ....
.... Starting in 2008, the byline "Richard Hoste" began to appear atop articles … for antisemitic outlets like The Occidental Observer, a site that once argued Jews are trying to exterminate white Americans. He wrote for Counter-Currents, which advocates for creating a whites-only ethnostate; Taki's Magazine, a far-right hub for paleoconservatives; and VDare, a racist anti-immigrant blog.
.... Starting in 2008, the byline "Richard Hoste" began to appear atop articles … for antisemitic outlets like The Occidental Observer, a site that once argued Jews are trying to exterminate white Americans. He wrote for Counter-Currents, which advocates for creating a whites-only ethnostate; Taki's Magazine, a far-right hub for paleoconservatives; and VDare, a racist anti-immigrant blog.
In 2010, Hanania was recruited by the American Nazi Richard Spencer for AlternativeRight; a 2012 data breach at Disqus suggests that Hanania used sock puppets to post comments at the site. He also ran a blog named after "the preferred euphemism for race science", which is rich with biographical overlap and instrumental to HuffPost's investigation.
And then there is the record he left:
Hoste sometimes expressed disgust with fat women. "If a woman lets herself be fat, she's refusing to put the bear [sic] minimum effort into life necessary to experience love, respect, and esteem," he wrote in the comments section of a 2012 blog. "Or maybe she's accepted feminism and convinced herself that it doesn't really matter."
He added: "Fat people not only are disgusting to look at; their obesity reflects some ugly personality traits."
This type of rank misogyny and fat-shaming was common in the online circles Hoste frequented at the time. One of his email addresses, according to data HuffPost reviewed from another data breach, was connected to an account on AutoAdmit, also known as XOXOhth ― a largely unmoderated message board, purportedly for lawyers and law students, that's infamous for its anonymous users' hatred of women.
In 2009, Hoste published a blog on HBD Books where he argued that "large-scale female involvement in politics" is a "bad thing."
"Women simply didn't evolve to be the decision makers in society," he wrote, adding that "women's liberation = the end of human civilization."
He added: "Fat people not only are disgusting to look at; their obesity reflects some ugly personality traits."
This type of rank misogyny and fat-shaming was common in the online circles Hoste frequented at the time. One of his email addresses, according to data HuffPost reviewed from another data breach, was connected to an account on AutoAdmit, also known as XOXOhth ― a largely unmoderated message board, purportedly for lawyers and law students, that's infamous for its anonymous users' hatred of women.
In 2009, Hoste published a blog on HBD Books where he argued that "large-scale female involvement in politics" is a "bad thing."
"Women simply didn't evolve to be the decision makers in society," he wrote, adding that "women's liberation = the end of human civilization."
And if Hanania found Sarah Palin an acceptable sort of woman for public office, it was the 2009 version of owning the libs, explaining, "The attractive, religious and fertile White woman drove the ugly, secular and barren White self-hating and Jewish elite absolutely mad well before there were any questions about her qualifications."
He looked forward to Palin in 2012 "just so I can watch liberals' heads explode" when the "goddess of implicit Whiteness" defeats the Black president. And in true alt-right fashion, he continued, "If it's going to be a long time until a White awakening, we may as well be entertained while we wait."
Women, Jews, Muslims, Hispanics, Blacks, just check them all down the list; Hanania's writing over the years is straightforward supremacism. He claims genetic differences between Muslims and Europeans mean "assimilation is impossible", and that Hispanics "don't have the requisite IQ to be a productive part of a first world nation", describing other races as "a permanent antagonist", and "Race mixing is like destroying a unique species or piece of art. It's shameful."
And it's one thing to keep piling on, but it's also incendiary; in 2009, Hanania wrote, "If they had decency, blacks would thank the white race for everything that they have." And that's before we get to eugenics and forced sterilization.
In 2010, he recycled a 1997 speech from American Nazi and author of The Turner Diaries, William Pierce.
Hanania emerged under his own named while in law school, then grad school, and then a prestigious postdoc at Columbia University.
In 2015 — five years after he'd used the Hoste pseudonym to argue that Black people can't govern themselves, and four years after he laid out his plan to sterilize people with IQs of less than 90 — Hanania published an op-ed in The Washington Post with the headline: "Donald Trump never apologizes for his controversial remarks. Here's why he shouldn't" ....
.... One of Hanania's first viral pieces on Substack — a 2021 article titled "Why Is Everything Liberal?" — was cited by columnists at The Washington Post and The New York Times. It also led to his first invitation to appear on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," America's most-watched cable news show at the time.
.... One of Hanania's first viral pieces on Substack — a 2021 article titled "Why Is Everything Liberal?" — was cited by columnists at The Washington Post and The New York Times. It also led to his first invitation to appear on "Tucker Carlson Tonight," America's most-watched cable news show at the time.
And nobody really wants to comment, right now; Hanania, himself declined, as did WaPo, NYT, and FOX News. Sen. J.D. Vance (R-OH), who has previously described Hanania as a "friend", also declined comment. Newsweek, Quillette, and National Review; Yale Federalist Society, Stanford University School of Business, Salem Center at University Texas, the unaccredited University of Austin. Substack isn't answering HuffPost's inquiries. Venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz, whose CEO has repeatedly appeared on Hanania's podcast, is also quiet in the moment, while publisher HarperCollins has not answered multiple inquiries.)
And that's the thing: Hiding in plain sight. There is a certain degree to which these people and organizations don't know what to say, and we can kind of understand why. But there is also this: If David Sacks, Peter Thiel, and Vivek Ramaswamy are also on the no-comment list, Hanania praises them as the "Tech Right", a movement that includes "longtermism", a transhumanist assertion whose "adherents are often obsessed with IQ scores and scientific racism, and the famous computer scientist Timnit Gebru has criticized longtermism as 'eugenics under a different name.'"
No wonder he's a conservative darling.
____________________
Notes:
@letsgomathias. "NEW @RichardHanania is a right-wing star. A @UTAustin scholar, his fans include JD Vance, Thiel, Musk, Sacks, Rufo. @HarperCollins will publish his book 'The Origins of Woke' HuffPost found he used a pseudonym for yrs to write for white supremacist sites". Twitter. 4 August 2023. Twitter.com. 4 August 2023. https://bit.ly/3qj6wrT
Mathias, Christopher. "Richard Hanania, Rising Right-Wing Star, Wrote For White Supremacist Sites Under Pseudonym". HuffPost. 4 August 2023. HuffPost.com. 4 August 2023. https://bit.ly/3OIIOi9
